Album Review: (smog) – Accumulation: None

This is not quite a new album for (smog) but a collection of old and hard-to-find tracks. There’s actually some pretty unlistenable noise experiments here (Astronaut, Floating, Hole In The Heart), with very little redeeming features. Thankfully there are some actual proper songs here.

A Hit uses heavy distorted guitar to deliver a kind of slacker anthem (“it’s not gonna be a hit so why even bother with it”). It’s really not as good as it sounds (which isn’t that good really) and not one which I’ll listen over and over to. The rest of the tracks are of varying quality. Spanish Moss is a fairly slight, acoustic strum, while Chosen One is a fuller sounding track, built around a piano. It’s interesting to hear how weedily Bill Callahan sings on these older tracks, light years away from his more recent material.

For those unfamiliar with Smog, listening closely to some of these tracks can make them seem disturbing. Real Live Dress features a great bit of guitar picking, sounding foreboding, like something off Doctor Came at Dawn. Musically it’s great, though the subject matter is creepy in the extreme. Came Blue has a going nowhere melody and creepy, drab atmosphere, but Little Girl Shoes is creepier still, as Bill Callahan sings deadpan about being “attracted to your little girl shoes” over some barely there, sparse music. Em, okay?

Later on there is an acoustic version of Cold Blooded Old Times (off Knock Knock) which is just bill and his rickety guitar, and it doesn’t really work, it’s like the song has had the life sucked out of it, they type of version that “turns your bones to glass.” It doesn’t work as well as the full band original version. On the other hand, White Ribbon is a song that was recorded for this collection and sounds pleasingly off-kilter. The melody is quite odd, and Bill’s phrasing is unconventional, though he is in fine voice, and the guitar playing on this one is really good. So against the odds the track works really well.

I Break Horses, featured here is a BBC session version of this track (originally on Kicking a Couple Around). It’s more fully realised than the original, though it starts out very sparsely, before building up to an almost anthem with the chorus, aided and abetted by some fine piano-playing.

It’s definitely not Bill Callahan’s best stuff, but worth checking out if you’re a fan for a handful of quality tunes.

Album Review: Smog – Knock Knock

Bill Callahan again worked with Jim O’Rourke on this 1999 album. It’s more expansive and diverse than previous album Red Apple Falls, indeed almost poppy, though it features a downright odd picture of a cat on the front!

The album opens with a sparse simple track, Let’s Move To The Country, consisting of Bill Callahan singing over a cello and a barely strummed guitar, but he follows this up with guitar anthem Held, which contains a great riff and beat. River Guard is a somewhat lengthy track, starting with the merest of guitar strums, before a wonderful piano part enters the mix. It’s a beautiful melody which builds up with percussion and more piano, before a great electric guitar before the end and gripping images in the lyrics (“stand there on a cliff with gooseflesh”).

He completely changes the mood with the first of his experiments featuring a children’s choir, the throwaway No Dancing, to which he sees fit to add heavy guitar and horns. He called this his album for teenagers, though I can’t imagine this being a teen anthem, however singalong it is! Teenage Spaceship is another brooding track with more gorgeous piano, while Cold Blooded Old Times is another uptempo, poppy tune featuring “the type of memories that turn your bones to glass” over strummed guitar.

After the moody Sweet Treat, Hit The Ground Running is another track featuring the children’s choir over a Velvet Underground-ish groove while Bill Callahan drawls agreeably through the song. The final 2 tracks return to the default Smog setting of sparseness. The album is a bit all over the place so it’s not a good one in terms of setting a mood, but it is probably his most trademark album in terms of the ‘Smog sound’.